From brawn to brains: Troy Crowder has become a skate guru years after throwing fists

Scott Cruickshank, Calgary Herald07.07.2014

Calgary Flames player development coach Troy Crowder, seen on Sunday at WinSport, threw a lot of fists during his storied NHL career. Most of the young players he’s working with now, though, have no idea who he was in his past life.

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Tall and trim. Black tracksuit. Just another middle-aged dude with a whistle.

Except he isn’t.

“That’s Troy Crowder?” pipes up one of the rookies at the Calgary Flames’ development camp. “He was a beast, wasn’t he? Wow. I’ve heard that name a million times. I had no idea that was him. That probably doesn’t happen very often — ex-fighter goes into the skating profession.

“That’s a cool story, for sure.”

True enough.

Because Crowder’s journey — from nose-bender to skate-nerd — is compelling.

For many Flames fans, news of his recent hiring as player-development coach would have been greeted with a shrug.

Yet for those of a certain vintage, Crowder is well-known.

Most famously, he bloodied an in-his-prime Bob Probert. Then, primarily on behalf of the New Jersey Devils, he took on the baddest brawlers of the 1990s. Kordic. Berube. Baumgartner. Peluso. Carkner. Miller. Domi. Grimson. McCarthy. Twist.

By the turn of the millennium, however, his career had been undone by back and shoulder injuries.

But even if the hockey world lost track of Crowder, he was never idle.

With time on his hands, he turned loose his curiosity.

His burning obsession? The reasons behind his own substandard skating.

“The issue bugged me enough that I said, ‘Well, I’m not sure what I want to do with my life after hockey, so I’m going to play with this,’ ” says the 46-year-old. “That’s what started this whole process.”

Crowder, in his home town of Walden, Ont., became a mad scientist.

His subject — skates.

His method — trial and error.

His laboratory — outdoor rinks.

“I’d put in a huge orthotic,” he says. “Or I’d shim something. Or I’d cut something open on the toe. Or make (the boot) wider. I’d do one skate and keep the other normal. Then I’d skate. I’d try to figure things out — feel and skate, feel and skate, feel and skate.

“My wife (Jennifer) nearly killed me many times. I had skates across the kitchen and coffee tables, all around the house.”

Once he got the hang of it, he added lab rats to the experiments. “Whoever was in the realm of my world.” In other words, his sons. Youngsters at hockey camps, too.

“I’d watch these kids, all knock-kneed — they couldn’t get over their skates properly,” says Crowder. “So I’d grind up some plastic, get some Velcro, hook something onto their skates . . . and get these little improvements.”

Over a span of five years, he customized the gear of countless skaters.

“My brain’s always trying to figure out puzzles . . . it was kind of a game in my head, you know?” Crowder says. “People who know me — people back home — they always knew I was that kind of guy. Thinking outside the box. Looking at things differently.

“The average Joe would just think that I was a tough-guy goon, dragging my knuckles on the ground, right?”

Crowder, though, discovered a niche.

Not all players are created equally — “Someone’s got a thick shin, someone’s got a skinny ankle, someone’s got big bones, someone’s got big heels” — but a boot’s eyelets? Always in the same place.

Last winter, he alleviated the lace-bite issues of a certain chap. Aaron Ekblad.

Crowder even went on CBC’s Dragons’ Den.

“But they didn’t air it,” he says. “They were too nice to me and they didn’t buy in.”

The Flames, however, did buy in, hiring the man last month. (Primary connection — Brian Burke and Crowder have made trips together to Afghanistan.)

To better document prospects’ strides this week, Crowder, on ice, will pull out his iPad.

Few of the teenagers, of course, have any inkling of the cutting-edge coach’s bare-knuckled background.

(General manager Brad Treliving joked that if any of them found Crowder on YouTube, he would certainly get a lot more room out there.)

As a rookie, Crowder fought 16 times — including that battering of Probert in the Devils’ season opener.

After that season, 1990-91, the six-foot-four winger appeared only 81 more times — for Detroit, Los Angeles, Vancouver.

“At certain times, you say, ‘Oh (darn), I wish I could’ve done (more),’ ” says Crowder. “Like, I wish when Gretz passed me the puck in front, I’d scored instead of tipping it wide. There’s a lot of things I wish could have happened for my highlight reel, so I could sit in the basement with my buddies and say, ‘Hey, me and Gretz — right there.’ ”

He laughs, then continues.

“In the grand scheme of things I wish I never got injured — wish, wish, wish — but I don’t think I’d change a thing. Because of the sacrifices, because of the things that I did, I’ve had a great after-life.”

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From brawn to brains: Troy Crowder has become a skate guru years after throwing fists

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